Re: [Pqc] WG adoption call for draft-hale-pquip-hybrid-signature-spectrums

[Wang Guilin <[e-mail]>]

I would like to support adoption, as this is seemingly very important for hybrid certificates, at least. 

In particular, it will be interesting to see how some properties, especially weak or strong non-separability, are related to the different applications for hybrid signatures: certificates, message authentication, identity authentication, and maybe more. 

Guilin

-----Original Message-----
From: Pqc <[e-mail]> On Behalf Of Stephen Farrell
Sent: Monday, 4 March 2024 7:05 am
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: [Pqc] WG adoption call for draft-hale-pquip-hybrid-signature-spectrums


Hiya,

On 03/03/2024 22:19, D. J. Bernstein wrote:
> Section 1.3 discusses "why hybrid digital signatures are desirable for 
> _some_  applications" (emphasis added). The text distinguishes 
> different applications and includes the most obvious considerations. 
> So I think the high-level issue is addressed.
> 
> Obviously the more detailed text still needs some work, but, given 
> that the current question is about adoption rather than consensus, I'd 
> say yes.

It's fair enough to be optimistic the the issues will be addressed after adoption, but I'm not in that place myself - I see a lot of people who seem to be convinced that hybrid sigs ought be used as the default for PQ-sigs without IMO that having been justified. So I am explicitly concerned that adoption as-is could mean minimising or ignoring the issues here, subsequently causing issues in other WGs when they discuss PQ-sigs . (BTW that's without accusing anyone of any bad faith, I just disagree with the conclusions some hybrid sig enthusiasts seem to have reached:-)

That said, it would not take many words to be clear that this is not a slam-dunk topic, but rather is one where at least some people who are not clueless have a negative opinion of hybrid sigs, (esp if proposed as the typical way of incorporating PQ-sigs), and that work is needed for this document to properly analyse the situation.

Cheers,
S.